The first of many...

I remember how far off kindergarten seemed when I first had Aubrey. It was like a distant dream that seemed eons away. And, yet, those eons seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Here we are with a kindergartener. How on earth does time move so quickly??

Aubrey was all about posing before her first day of kindergarten. To be honest, taking official "first day pictures" felt surreal. I couldn't help thinking that this was the first of soo, soo many days of school for our little girl.  The beginning. Wow. And she did so well. No tears, just confidence! Love this girl of ours!

Aubrey was so ready to start kindergarten. Like I've mentioned before, I was really nervous about my decision to start her at four (she turned 5 two weeks after school started). I wasn't nervous because of how she would do academically. I knew she would do just fine in that area. It was more the social aspects...the new friends, the 26+ kids per class, the 140 kindergarteners all at recess at the same time. But this girl of mine has matured so much in the last year! She has done so well and is really thriving in kindergarten.

Even with the successes, there have been some major transitions. Sleep has probably been our biggest adjustment. We've always put our girls to bed relatively early, but with full day kindergarten, we've moved up bedtime even more. On most school nights, the girls are in bed by 7:15. Aubrey NEEDS her sleep, and this has really helped the mornings to go smoothly. Another transition we've been working on is dealing with her peers. Specifically, Aubrey has had to learn how to deal with more behaviorally challenging peers and some friendship drama. During the first week, she would come home with the stories about certain students. She was so sensitive and would take little comments to heart. I don't think she really knew that some kids were just trouble makers/bullies. She thought they were specifically being mean to her. My mama heart would ache at her hurt feelings, but it only took a couple of weeks for her to realize that those specific students were just that way. That their behavior had nothing to do with her and the best solution was to ignore mean comments. Now, I never hear about their bad days, but instead she'll get in the car and report when the challenging students have good days. "Guess what mom?! ***** got sunsational today! I was so happy she had a good day!" She's also grown so much in freindship. Her best bud and main play pal is still our next door neighbor (not in the same class, but also in kinder), but due to her being absent for a few days in week 2, Aubrey had to learn to branch out. Although there were some tears shed on her second day being absent, and the "I don't have anyone to play with"s broke my heart, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to Aubrey. She was forced to branch out, and now she has a few different friend circles. I also think that daycare on my work days has helped her to build these friendship circles because our neighbor girl isn't there. I love seeing her confidence grow as her friendships grow!

With the Build-A-Bear we made after the first day! (We had a gift card from her birthday LAST year!)

Monday marks yet another transition. Her "real" teacher will be back from maternity leave. I know Aubrey will miss Mrs. Papasergia, but I look forward to her finally getting to settle into the real routine of kindergarten. We were blessed that she had such a great long term sub! (sidenote: her long term sub just got hired by my district, so we'll be co-workers starting next week) Here's hoping that the rest of the year goes as well as these first few weeks!

I'd say this was a pretty smooth first morning with 26 kindergarteners!! :)